History Franchise / Anightmareonelmstreet

** Freddy versus the cast of ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''. Which, if you have the [=PS3=] version, means Freddy versus [[VideoGame/GodOfWarSeries Kratos]]. CoolVsAwesome indeed.

->''One, two; Freddy's coming for you\\
Three, four; better lock your door\\
Five, six; grab your crucifix\\
Seven, eight; gonna stay up late\\
Nine, ten; {{never sleep again}}''

Nine, ten; never sleep again''

* HarmfulToMinors: Freddy was a child killer in life, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen and he could've been worse]]. Wes Craven's original plan was to have Freddy be a ''molester'' as well, but he trashed the idea to avoid being accused of [[RippedFromTheHeadlines exploiting a series of highly publicised child molestations in California that occurred while the film was in production]]. The implication was fairly clear in the original films anyway and become extremely obvious in ''Freddy vs. Jason''. And stated straight out in the remake.

* '''''Film/FreddyVsJason''''' (2003) -- Stuck in DevelopmentHell for years, the crossover between Freddy and fellow horror legend [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]] finally reached the silver screen in 2003. Trapped in Hell since his last defeat (''The Final Nightmare'') and unable to return [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly due to Springwood's censorship of his name and exploits]], Freddy uses what little remains of his power to assume the guise of Pamela Voorhees and resurrect her son, Jason. Freddy sends Jason to Springwood to kill the "naughty children" there, and as the bodies pile up, panic spreads among Springwood's populace and fuels Freddy, who soon gains enough strength to start his reign of terror all over. When Jason [[KillSteal refuses to stop killing]], however, Freddy gets rather upset...

* AGodAmI: Freddy has traits of this, especially in the dream world when he is a literal nightmare god.

* ColorContrast: Freddy Krueger wears a red and green striped sweater as part of his signature outfit. WordOfGod explained that this particular color combination was chosen because Craven read in an article that it's the one that the human eye has the most difficulty processing, thus adding to Freddy's unsettling appearance.

* MotiveDecay: Subverted; after slaughtering the children of the parents of Springwood responsible for killing him, the film franchise changes Freddy's motives to [[OurSoulsAreDifferent collecting souls]] to increase his powers, occasionally trying to find a way to transfer his powers into the real world, and sometimes just [[AxeCrazy killing for the sake of killing]]. By ''Freddy's Dead'', he becomes an OmnicidalManiac, intending to kill the children in every town in the world he can spread to.
* NeverSleepAgain: The {{Trope Namer|s}} and the way Freddy kills his victims.

* RedGreenConstrast: Creator/WesCraven had read that red and green are the two most difficult colors for the human eye to see when placed right next to each other, so he gave Freddy the iconic red-and-green stripped sweater to make his appearance that much more fundamental disturbing.

* SealedGoodInACan: With Freddy being the can. Everyone he kills in the dreamworld, their soul gets absorbed into him, enhancing his strength of power. Alice manages to free them completely in ''Dream Master'', as does Jacob in ''Dream Child'', but FridgeHorror comes into play when you realize the possibility that all the other characters from the previous movies Freddy has killed... they've been stuck inside him ever since. This gets doubled when you think about everyone he killed prior to the beginning of ''Freddy's Dead''. If he was strong enough to be able to warp reality and erase the memory of someone from the world...

** In the FanFilm ''Film/FreddyVsGhostbusters'', Freddy is pitted against the Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}. [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin The ghostbusters defeat Freddy]], but [[TheBadGuyWins Freddy wins]] in one of the {{Alternate Ending}}s they shot, and does a VictoryDance.

** Also, believe it or not, Freddy Vs Music/DJJazzyJeffAndTheFreshPrince in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-56CNh5S7GU "Nightmare on My Street."]] The duo recorded it for the film, with Robert Englund providing dialogue (no, Freddy doesn't sing... but he does rap). It was rejected from the soundtrack, but they released it anyway, resulting in a lawsuit from New Line Cinema that forced them to destroy the master tapes of the song's music video.

* '''''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreetPart2FreddysRevenge''''' (1985) -- Five years after the original film, Freddy -- who wants to kill outside of the Dream World -- plans to break into reality; to circumvent the BroughtDownToNormal effect, he plans to possess [[AmbiguouslyGay Jesse Walsh]], the teenage son of the latest family to move into 1428 Elm Street. [[BrokenBase Franchise fans consider this either the best or the worst of the series]], due in part to the film's increased emphasis on BodyHorror and the excessive HomoeroticSubtext.

* FreddyKruegerFingers: The trope namer.

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: A flashback sees him playing in the yard with his daughter, and even when he [[spoiler:murders his wife for discovering his crimes, he spares her.]] He seems to love as her as much as Freddy Krueger loves anything, which really, ''really'' isn't saying much.

* '''''Film/{{A Nightmare on Elm Street|1984}}''''' (1984) -- Directed and written by Creator/WesCraven. In the original film, Heather Langenkamp plays Nancy Thompson, an average teenage girl who has nightmares for several successive nights. Her friends (including Creator/JohnnyDepp in his first acting role ''ever'') end up murdered, one by one, [[YourMindMakesItReal in their sleep]] -- by the same man Nancy sees in her nightmares: a badly-burnt man who wears a red-and-green striped shirt, wields a knifed glove, and calls himself Freddy Krueger. Nancy confronts her mother, who tells her that Krueger, a child molester/murderer known as "The Springwood Slasher", died as the result of a vigilante murder by the parents of his victims after [[PoliceAreUseless a botched police investigation let Freddy go free]]. Freddy wants revenge against his killers, so he decides to kill the children of those parents in their dreams, where their parents can't protect them. Can Nancy stop Freddy once and for all? Well...since several sequels followed this one, one can only assume...

* '''''Film/WesCravensNewNightmare''''' (1994) -- [[InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt As you can tell]], Creator/WesCraven returned to the franchise -- this time, as writer and director for this meta picture. ''New Nightmare'' sets itself in our reality, where we think of Freddy as nothing more than a fictional horror film icon. After Craven starts to develop ideas for a new installment in the terminated franchise, [[UltimateEvil an ancient evil]] -- [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned]] in the film series since the first and released by Freddy's death in the sixth -- decides it doesn't like the idea of getting trapped again; once it sets out to stop the production, it begins to target Heather Langenkamp (who the entity views as "Nancy", the only one who can stop it) and her young son. The arguable precursor to ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}'' (also written and directed by Craven), ''New Nightmare'' received a degree of praise for its study of the [[NoFourthWall nature of reality]].

* ''Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy'' (2010) -- The definitive documentary documenting the production of the entire series. Four hours long, it features many of the participants of the original films. Heather Langenkamp narrates.
* ''I Am Nancy'' (2011) -- Heather Langenkamp took Creator/WesCraven's ''[[SelfReferentialHumor New Nightmare]]'' to the [[CashCowFranchise next logical step]] and made a [[GenreShift comedic documentary]] [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536421/ about herself and Nancy.]]

* ShapeshifterDefaultForm: Freddy Krueger is an accomplished shapeshifter in the dream world, regularly appearing as other people, mechanical devices, and a host of other forms. While he can look however he wants, as a nightmare ghost he prefers to appear as his post-death burnt self, probably to scare his victims. His true form in the real world is his skeletal remains, but it remains to be seen if he even ''has'' a true spectral form.

* ForTheEvulz: Freddy doesn't have any motive for killing people beyond the fact that he finds it entertaining. However, the sixth film suggests that his [[AbusiveParents abusive foster father]], along with several mean orphans, and the fact that his own mother abandoned him at birth, had a hand in making him such a sadist, although his ChildByRape (of a nun, by 100 different psychopaths) origin implies that at least some of it was InTheBlood even beforehand. The remake tries to change this and make his character ''slightly'' less of a monster than his original incarnation.

* AdultsAreUseless: You'd think that by the fourth film, the adults and parents of Springwood would realize that something was amiss about all these deaths but instead remain oblivious at best, or downright hostile jerks at worst. Ronee Blakely, the actress who played Nancy's mother, has said they [[ObliviouslyEvil "verge on being villains"]]. It's not until '''''Film/FreddyVsJason''''' that they finally accept that Freddy is not just an urban legend. And even still, it took Freddy killing every child and teenager in town before they finally stopped carrying the IdiotBall.

* {{Jerkass}}: The majority of the parents throughout the movies are apathetic or just downright abusive towards their children, which is ironic because the reason Freddy was killed in the first place was because the parents were trying to protect their kids from him. Their [[AbusiveParents abusive tendencies]] vary, from Marge Thompson and Dennis Jordan's [[TheAlcoholic alcoholism]], Elaine Paker's [[ParentalNeglect neglect]], Racine Gibson being a domineering StageMom, to the most extreme example being Tracy's sexually abusive father whom she is implied to have killed in self-defense.

* ForTheEvulz: Freddy doesn't have any motive for killing people beyond the fact that he finds it entertaining. The sixth film suggests that his [[AbusiveParents abusive foster father]] had a hand in making him such a sadist, although his ChildByRape (of a nun, by 100 different psychopaths) origin implies that at least some of it was InTheBlood even beforehand. The remake tries to change this and make his character ''slightly'' less of a monster than his original incarnation.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Coach Schneider]] in ''Freddy's Revenge'', who's implied to be a rapist. And this trope is rare in the ''Nightmare'' movies, except ''Film/FreddyVsJason'', which is part ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'', which is the exact opposite and follows this trope all the time.

* ''VideoGame/DeadByDaylight'' -- Like ''Mortal Kombat 9'', ''Dead by Daylight'' also included Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy as a [[GuestFighter Guest Killer]] along with Quentin Smith as a new survivor and the Badham Preschool as a new map.

->''One, two; Freddy's coming for you''
->''Three, four; better lock your door''
->''Five, six; grab your crucifix''
->''Seven, eight; gonna stay up late''
->''Nine, ten; never sleep again''

[[AC:Comicbooks]]

* ''Comicbook/NightmaresOnElmStreet'' (1991) -- Six issue series by Innovation Publishing. Continues the story of ''Dream Warriors'' and ''Dream Child''.

* ''Comicbook/NewLineCinemasTalesOfHorror'' (2007) -- Features two stories, ''[[Franchise/TheTexasChainsawMassacre The Texas Chainsaw Salesman]]'' and ''Copycat'' about serial killer who is trying to pose as Freddy Krueger.
* ''Comicbook/FreddyVsJasonVsAsh'' (2008) -- Six issues series that serves as a sequel to ''Film/FreddyVsJason'' and crossover with ''Franchise/EvilDead''.

** ''Comicbook/FreddyVsJasonVsAsh'', in which Ash from ''Franchise/EvilDead'' is added to the mix.

* DreamIntro: A regular occurrence. EVERY one of the films starts with the main character having a nightmare about Freddy before waking up in a CatapultNightmare right when he's about to kill them (because otherwise, it would obviously be a pretty short movie). The only mild exception is in [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet3DreamWarriors the third one]], and that's just because the protagonist is awake for a few minutes before falling asleep. And in ''Film/FreddyVsJason'' it's because the movie opens with Freddy himself.